The Rise Of Right Wing Art..?

Of course, you must expect it: in rightwing times, rightwing art flourishes.

Have I missed something? Do we get any examples of this ‘rightwing art’?

In the London theatre, the Donmar Warehouse has prospered by seeking out religious mystic playwrights of the last century like TS Eliot and Enid Bagnold, while a journey through the West End today offers almost no new plays of any intelligence.

In the opinion of David Hare, that is…

At the cinema, The King’s Speech has swept all before it, while the best British film of last year, The Arbor, being about women on a Bradford council estate, has barely been seen.

Well, one starred a current Hollywood golden boy, and was backed by the publicity engine of a major film studio, and the other was a low-budget film starring….almost no-one anyone had even heard of.

Not such a surprise, then, really?

… in this national festival of reaction, the attempt not just to extol but to redeem from martyrdom the eminent playwright Terence Rattigan represents the most intriguing cultural rejig of all.

I can only assume this is a hot topic in left-wing/arty circles, because it’s lost on me…

It has become a commonplace of commentary to turn him into some sort of public school victim whose fall from grace can be put down to nasty goings-on initiated by yobs at the Royal Court and Stratford East in the 1950s.

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Nope, still can’t understand what this bloke is waffling on about.

Those of us who lived through the Thatcher years will remember how, for the first time, the powerful and successful were encouraged to develop an ugly vein of grievance. To the beaming approval of the prime minister, fabulously wealthy business folk took to telling us how little appreciated they were, and how intolerable it was to carry an equal burden of taxation and misunderstanding. With Cameron in charge this wheedling tone of self-righteous privilege is back in the public discourse.

Ahhhh, that’s more like it! Whatever it is, it’s clearly all Thatcher’s fault.

… The Arbor, being about women on a Bradford council estate, has barely been seen.

Er, because it’s about some women on a Bradford council estate? Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels had a little known cast, practically unknown outside the UK, and I think was made for less than a million pounds, but it did very well all the same. The Arbor doesn’t sound like it’s got mass market appeal even if they wrote a scene with Scarlett Johansson jelly wrestling into it. Actually that probably would work but I expect it would somehow make it right wing.